50 million views later.....how a major airline lost control of the messaging to social media

I remember as young man doing a stint in a large corporate marketing department. I also remember someone very knowingly telling me the marketing mantra of the time: “If you give a customer poor service they will tell ten people”.

The principle of a disgruntled customer telling others of their experience is not a new one. But the reason they told ten people back in the late 1980s, before the Internet, Social Media and mobile phones was because that is all they could tell without a lot of effort. The following tale illustrates in horrific terms how that paradigm has shifted beyond recognition.

In 2008 Dave Carroll, a barely known Country singer took a flight with his band, from Chicago to Nebraska. They flew United Airlines. As was usual, Dave checked his guitar in to the plane’s hold – no problem there – it had a hard case. But as he sat in his window seat before take-off he was horrified to see a baggage handler throw a guitar case aimlessly towards the hold which it missed. He instantly recognised the guitar case that bounced along the runway as his. He alerted several United employees on the plane to what was happening but was treated by all of them with complete indifference.

On arrival in Nebraska Dave’s worst fears were confirmed. His beloved guitar was broken. He consoled himself that he was sure a big airline like United would take responsibility and compensate him. He was in for a shock!

After an astonishing nine months of fruitless negotiations with the airline Dave was no further forward. All he got was standard letters from United – apparently he had not reported the incident within 24 hours as required by their terms and conditions. They didn’t want to know. Exasperated at the indifference of both the in-flight staff and the Customer Services team, Dave decided to take drastic action and so began United Airlines’ nightmare.

Dave and his band recorded a song called “United Breaks Guitars” and loaded it on iTunes. They also recorded a professionally shot video and posted it on YouTube. It became an overnight sensation. On its first day online the video was viewed 150,000 times! Barely a month later it had been viewed 5 million times. The week after it was released “United Breaks Guitars” was the most downloaded song on iTunes. But that was only the start.

The viral news story was picked up by the news networks and appeared on Fox News, a cable news station that is received in 90 million homes in the USA. So let’s conservatively say that 50 million people were exposed to the story and United’s poor performance in the few weeks after the song was recorded.

In the midst of this media maelstrom there are few reports of any concerted response by United. A company spokesman is reported to have described the song as “Excellent” and United's managing director of customer solutions, telephoned Carroll to apologize for the foul-up. He also is reported to have asked if the carrier could use the video internally for training. United mentioned it hoped to learn from the incident

The humiliation and brand damage for United was bad enough. But the very real and very expensive consequence, as reported by The Times newspaper, was that within 4 days of the video being posted online, United Airline's stock price fell 10%, costing shareholders about $180 million in value

It is always great to read a David versus Goliath story like this - especially one that results in such a high profile and humiliating defeat for the big guy. But there are some general lessons that companies can learn from this:

1.       It is right to give your customer service team some guidelines to operate within but that only works if there is some management oversight to pick up the cases that are getting out of hand. It beggars belief that United allowed this situation to drag on for nine months without it being escalated. If it was escalated then the outcome is even more surprising.

2.       Dave was claiming $1,000 to repair his guitar. It probably cost United $1,000 in staff time alone to process nine months of correspondence. Sometimesyou just need to apply some good old fashioned common sense. It would probably have been cheaper for United to pay this claim right at the outset.

3.        Customer Services is not designed to be the scene of a fight between you or your customer. The old adage that the customer is always right has never been truer when you consider the damage that a customer can do using modern media. We use a guiding principle in these situations of “It is not about being right, it is about being helpful”.

4.       Sometimes you need to cast a little bread on the water. Dave was obviously not a bogus claimant. I am guessing he sent them a picture of his broken guitar and they could check that he was on the flight. United should have swallowed this. Who knows they might have turned a negative story into a positive one although it may not have got 5 million YouTube views.

5.       This is a clear warning to everyone that Companies need to monitor the “0nline conversation”. Stuff happens in the world of social media. If 10 million views on YouTube are anything to go by I am guessing that the chat rooms, Facebook, MySpace, Bebo etc where full of talk about this. What were United doing on Facebook and generally in the Social media to manage this? There is no report of United’s response which probably tells us all we need to know.

The legacy of “United Breaks Guitars” is that at last count it had clocked up 10.1 million views on YouTube and is regularly used at Social Media and Customer Service training sessions as an example, admittedly an extreme one, of what can happen when you treat customers poorly and don’t manage the fall out well!
Enjoy Dave Carroll and his band singing United Breaks Guitars here: